


Perspective

by TwirlsWrites



Series: Force Myself to Write [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwirlsWrites/pseuds/TwirlsWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco Ramon didn’t know Barry Allen before he was struck by lightning, but 9 months of a physical manifestation of his guilt can really get a guy thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Barry was in a coma N I N E M O N T H S and sometimes I feel like the Flash writers for get that, so here’s Cisco ruminating on Barry Allen and the things he makes Cisco feel even before they really meet. Also on Tumblr: Mockingbirdie

    Cisco Ramon was a man at home with his feelings, and he knew that Barry Allen brought those out in the extremes.  
  
    Guilt. A bone-deep guilt upon seeing him for the first time. Doctor Wells had asked Cisco to pump up some health monitors for a patient, so it’s not like he didn’t know what to expect, but the first time Caitlin and he had visited Barry Allen’s hospital bed - Wells waving them ahead while he waited for the family - he was in the middle of a seizure.  
  
    It had been two weeks since his admittance, but Barry still had an ugly burn mark on his hand, and it was shown in sharp relief against his pale pale skin as his whole body shuddered.  
  
    So yeah, the guilt. Cisco was familiar with guilt by that point - Seeing Caitlin drop the walkie, hearing the number of casualties on the news grow, all of the memorials he had gone to…. guilt, yeah, it was apart of him now. But it was a lot different to actually see someone actively suffering because of something Cisco had made.       
  
    That guilt was followed by relief. Once they moved Barry Allen to the S.T.A.R. Labs hastily - but expertly — assembled medical bay, his seizures gradually lessened in severity and then stopped entirely. 

    The night marking the first full week that Barry Allen went without shorting out a machine or sending them all into a panic with a seizure, Cisco went home and cried for like an hour.  
    (It was friggin’ embarrassing.)  
  
    After that it was basically seven months of a lingering fear. He researched Barry Allen: a man who was tagged in no less than 27 pictures by one Iris West eating different pizza each time; a man who had two public Spotifies for modern rock and one private Spotify made up solely of Lady Gaga. Barry had skipped the 8th grade, was a CI valued enough to have private lab space, had perpetual late issues, and had a blog dedicated to a bunch of weird and bizarre occurrences.  
  
    Sadness, too, was in play. Barry was in a coma - of course it was going to be sad. Still, Cisco was surprised how much it hurt when he’d see Barry’s hand twitch, or when he’d come in in the morning and see Barry’s dad asleep in the chair next to his bed. 

    One time after an Iris visit, Cisco was hunting through the room for his iPod and found the Central City Stars calendar from Barry’s nightstand torn up in the trash; a quick calculation told him that Barry had been unconscious for exactly 150 days. Cisco was startled to realize his eyes were damp.  
  

 “You’re not supposed to get too attached your your patients,” Caitlin told him when he brought it up, “but it happens sometimes.” 

    “He’s not my patient,” Cisco pointed out. Caitlin shrugged, putting Barry’s arm back down after a blood draw. 

    “He sort of is,” she said, arching an eyebrow as Cisco tucked the arm back under the blanket.  
  
    The last feeling that comatose Barry Allen brought to Cisco was terror.

  
    “I have some great workout music ready for his stretches,” Cisco said, helping Caitlin move Barry from under the blankets. She glanced at him doubt clear in those eyebrows of her. Feeling the need to be dramatic, Cisco raised the remote as high in the air as he could and pressed play to start Poker Face. 

    “Pokerface, really?” Caitlin scoffed. Cisco grinned. 

    “Like you don’t know all the lyrics,” he relied. Caitlin sighed. 

    “What are you doing?” she asked. 

    “He likes this song,” Cisco informed her. He slipped the remote back in his pocket and pulled out a Twizzler. 

    “How would you possibly know that?” Caitlin asked. Cisco shrugged, walking back over to his desk. 

    “I looked at his Facebook page,” he replied. He could practically hear Caitlin roll her eyes as she walked over to grab her charts. 

    Then Barry sat straight up with a gasp and Cisco lost an approximate 6 years from his life in shock. 

    Following that was a giddy sense of relief. Barry was alive! Alive, awake, cognoscente, and seemingly no worse for wear (which was weird but Cisco would worry about that later). Cisco kept having to touch Barry’s arm, shoulder, back, just to hear his heartbeat through his skin - fast, too, for the record (probably because Caitlin kept poking him and Cisco kept touching him). 

    “Holy Shit,” Cisco breathed after Barry left with Doctor Wells for the tour of destruction.  
  
  



End file.
